Jesse

It would be interesting to know whether Bonobos, who live in more female-dominated social groups then any other primates, still exhibit the phenomenon of females preferring higher-status males. If so, it would suggest Goldberg's argument is not sound; if not, that might suggest that truly matriarchal societies are only possible when this status-seeking instinct is absent or significantly diminished.

jayh

As a mere theoretic possibility, this is reasonable enough. Problem is, there is simply no evidence for any matriarchal society, either existing today, or destroyed by Christians/Muslims in the past.

There is no current, or documented historical matriarchal society. People sometimes confuse them with matrilinear societies (where family wealth and social power pass through the mother's line) but even these are not in any sense matriarchal.

j

God Fearing Atheist

My point exactly.

lpetrich

It could well be that there has never been a society where women have dominated men the way that men have often dominated women, but I wish to ask another question:

Why does one sex have to dominate the other?

We ought to explore the possibility of neither sex dominating the other, of both sexes having roles of social dominance.

I think that an impressive case can be made for supposing the sexes to be a lot alike. Consider language. Is there a such thing as "male grammar" and "female grammar"? As far as I've been able to determine, both sexes use the same grammar in the languages that they speak. Also, as Carol Tavris has pointed out in The Mismeasure of Woman, reports of the sexes being mentally alike in some way do not get publicized as much as reports of the sexes being different.

However, some of this "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" reporting may be from a tendency to identify oneself as one sex or the other -- even if the two sexes are very much alike in many ways.

Furthermore, there are ways in which sociocultural evolution can mimic biological evolution -- shared circumstances can cause shared solutions. As Daniel Dennett has noted in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, there is a universal tendency to point the pointy ends of spears forward -- a tendency which does not imply the existence of some pointy-end-forward genetic tendency. That orientation is the most useful orientation of a spear, and spear-users can easily learn to give a spear that orientation.

Natural selection can work on a sociocultural scale. Imagine a society of peaceniks and a society of warniks. The warniks fight the peaceniks and win, leaving nothing but warniks. No genes involved -- just the workings of societies.

Nevertheless, we are not like many protists and fungi, which have lookalike sexes that only differ in certain recognition genes and their proteins. And sometimes large numbers of such sexes, but that's another story.

But even there, sociocultural natural selection can operate. For example, it may be easier for a society to conquer and dominate other societies if women in it are not much more than baby machines and slaves. That would enable such a society to crank out more babies and enable it to outbreed other societies.

Also, the male sex is more expendable in reproduction than the female sex, so a society that makes warfare an exclusively male business will be able to outbreed those that have women doing some of the fighting.

lpetrich

There is a very interesting book, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham, which somewhat supports Dr. Goldberg's claims, but with the interpretation that male dominance is simply the victory of the biggest bullies, and not the victory of the legitimate rulers.

Here is a nice review of it, with some hints on what the authors' next project is.

But even here, a sociocultural explanation may also work -- men would be socialized to be bigger bullies than women because doing so helps them win battles. OTOH, socializing women to be bullies would not be as effective, because they are the ones who have to take care of the babies and little children, and being eager to pick fights does not make for good caretaking.

Luiseach

Perhaps women would choose 'higher-status' men in order to raise the level of their own status, thereby securing a higher rung on the social ladder for themselves and any potential offspring.

Jackalope

Excuse me, but social power was what we were discussing, wasn't it? Argh, I'm blanking on it, but there's at least one province in India where the women do indeed hold the actual power, not just the bloodline inheritence.

Ahah. Khasi is the ethnic group I was thinking of. The province is Meghalaya. The women control the wealth, run the businesses, and the men live in their wife's house. Explain to me how this is not a matriarchy?

lpetrich

Although a man moving to his wife's village rather than a woman moving to her husband's village is certainly an interesting social mutation, it also can be given a male-dominant spin: that a woman's brother and father and so forth refuse to give her up to her husband.

Also, many women do not take being dominated lying down; consider how many husbands have been henpecked by their wives. It may not be very dignified, but it does suggest that women are not naturally submissive. And it is also more consistent with the biggest-bully view of male dominance rather than the legitimate-ruler view.

God Fearing Atheist

Even in that case, male dominance behavior would still be a function of evolved male physiology (albeit a different sort, and indirectly), right?

-GFA

God Fearing Atheist

Thats part of the idea.

In the EEA, women would have needed to secure resources during pregnancy (which is difficult to do on her own), and a pair-bonded mates abilty to exert influence over other men is helping in reducing unwanted sexual advances (like rape).

-GFA